Remember how I said I was at an event in Philadelphia last week? It went swimmingly, I thought. And now I have corroboration. Jennifer Sheffield has posted a report: bigbluemarblebooks.blogspot.com/2009/11/ya-fusion-or-our-differences-unite-us.html. Makes me wonder, rather, what I must have looked like when Catherine said she outlined all her books, several times. In different colors. Rather the way hers did when I said I just jumped in and let the devil take the hindmost, I suspect.

My constant advice to all students of writing has always been to read, read, read. Time being the unyielding thing it is, I've also noticed that the more I write, the less I've been reading myself. There's something wrong with that. So I've been making a concerted effort to read more, fueled in part by a great influx recently of books I really, really want to read.

Many of them are pleasant, some of them have been remarkable (and I'll tell you about them later). But the one I read last weekend, which absolutely blew my socks off, was Libba Bray's masterful YA, Going Bovine.

It's remarkable. The voice of the young male protagonist is completely convincing--funny, angry, totally early 21st Century without being mired in contemporary teen-speak. Cameron is a little like a 21st century, less whiny, and much funnier Holden Caulfield. I found him frustrating, endearing, and so very real it was hard to believe he exists only as long as I'm reading about him. His friends include a Mexican dwarf and a talking lawn gnome who claims to be Baldur the Beautiful and hates having his picture taken. Oh, and a punk angel with torn fishnets. The plot careens between American road-movie, epic fantasy, satire, and problem novel, pretty much without stopping for breath, following an emotional logic that is utterly compelling and kept me turning pages when by all rights I should have been asleep.

And if I get any more specific than that, I'll so spoil the ride.

I laughed a lot while reading this book. And I cried, hard, when I was finishing it. Which I almost never do--just ask Ellen. And I went right to my computer (as soon as I'd blown my nose) and wrote Libba a fan letter.

I didn't really know much about this before we went. An out-of-town friend was going with other friends, I find the St. Ann's Warehouse productions stimulating, I like Brooklyn. Had I known, I probably wouldn't have gone, and would have missed a lovely dinner and a play different from the Classic Theatre/Musical/Old-Fashioned well-made plays I usually go to.

So now I've had my Becket-meets-Synge-meets-Genet experience, and don't need to have another one for a while.

That said, The New Electric Ballroom was a solid and nicely-structured representative of the genre, with three remarkable actresses playing sisters, caught up in the pivotal experience of going to hear a rock star at the eponymous ballroom when the older ones were 16 and 18. The younger one (now in her 40s) is their audience and effectual slave, being the only one who ever leaves the house, but is slowly withering in the desert of a dead-end job in a small canning town, with no emotional life outside her sisters' stories and no prospect of one. The only other character is a middle-aged fishmonger who bursts into the house at intervals, compulsively delivering fish and gossip, for neither of which he is paid or thanked.

In short, it's a wee bit on the grim side.

In case this kind of thing is absolutely your cup of Barry's, I won't reveal the really rather cool climax and anti-climax (in the classical sense) that shapes the second half, but it doesn't spoil anything, I think, to remark that it doesn't relieve the general aura of "life sucks and then you die" that pervades the narrative. As you may have figured out, there's nobody who likes a good tragedy as well as I. But I do pretty much lack a taste for irony, and this is a deeply ironical play. I'm also not wild about the assumption that a woman can't possibly have a life if she doesn't have a man, but I suppose it could equally well be read as a cautionary tale for women who believe that, and it's written by a woman (Enda Walsh) so I will suspend judgment.

In any case,, Rosaleen Linehan, who plays the oldest sister, Breda, has played Beckett (no surprises there) and is a force of nature. The second sister, Ada, is played by Catherine Walsh, who has been in Dancing at Lughnasa--and done Beckett on the radio. She, too, was remarkable. The youngest sister, Ruth Mcabe, was in The Snapper, among other things, but wasn't quite up to the weight of the others (IMHO, anyway). Mikel Murfi, as the lone (and lonely) male Patsy, was wonderful, with a real range and vulnerability.

One of the Interfictions 2 authors, Ray Vukcevich ("The Two of Me") has a friend who runs a bookstore on Second Life. He is very kindly setting up a virtual reading event there, with 5 other authors and an editor.

Perhaps it doesn't need saying that I have never been on Second Life before. I hardly have time to live my First Life, after all, and I'm not overwhelmingly comfortable conversing with people who both are and aren't really there. Still, I have more time than my massively over-committed co-editor, and I feel that it's my responsibility to support and introduce my authors and be The Official Representative of the IAF. Plus, I'm curious.

So I volunteered.

Fast-forward to my avataricious self (that would be Delia Yorfle, a name that seemed appealingly Dr. Seussish) standing on the helpfully-named Help Island with a lot of other debutantes, swinging my long brown pony tail, swishing my pink-sprigged butt, faling off platforms, walking into other avatars and immovable objects, jumping up and down aimlessly, blowing kisses at the air, and generally trying to figure out what was up with this. And a young avatar labeled Pierre something comes up to me. And greets me. In French.

The ensuing conversation (in French) went something like this (in translation).

Pierre: Good evening. How are things?

Ms. Yorfle: Good evening. Things are good.

Pierre: You're beautiful.

Ms. Yorfle: You're kidding.

Pierre: No. You must not say that. In this virtual world, you are beautiful.

Ms. Yorfle: You are kind. Well, goodbye. (I manage, at this point, to turn around and walk away.)

Pierre: (Following, at speed) Stay!

Ms. Yorfle: (Walks faster. Falls off cliff. Keeps walking)

Pierre: (Still following) There is a place nearby with a big bed.

Ms. Yorfle exits the program and I go and get a cup of tea.

Seriously.

Next time, I go look for a desert island to practice in.

I'm going to be reading and talking about Changeling and Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen this Thursday, November 19, 7:00pm at Big Blue Marble Books in Philadelphia, PA. I'll be sharing honors with Catherine Gilbert Murdock, author of the Dairy Queen trilogy and YA fantasy Princess Ben.

It ought to be tons of fun. If you know any tweens or teens in the Philadelphia area, send them around.

I'm sure adults are welcome too.

If you're in or near Larchmont, New York, I'm going to be appearing at the Voracious Reader:

Lucky 13 - Teen Event
Friday, November 13, 2009
7:00pm - 9:00pm

Superstitious? Test your luck on Friday the 13th with another great teen/tween event. A fantasy trio of three remarkable authors and their newest books: Sarah Beth Durst, Ice, Carolyn MacCullough, Once a Witch, and Delia Sherman, The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen. Best for ages 10 - 14.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sarah Beth Durst is the author of the charming Into the Wild, and Carolyn MacCollough has written some very fine books, among them Drawing the Ocean.

When we were in Portmeirion in September (was that only two months ago? Tempus fugit in a big way), I thought I remembered talking to someone who was a huge "Prisoner" fan. I therefore bought a pamphlet called Portmeirion in "The Prisoner" and its History and a natty little badge of the "Prisoner" penny-farthing bicycle, trusting that I'd remember who they were destined for.

You know where this is going, right?

I've read the pamphlet, and it's dandy--not, certainly, a PopCult scholar's dream, but it covers all the basics, and has beautiful (if small) pictures--in color, too, unlike the show itself. And it's got a short history of Portmeirion itself, and some of the original maps and plans. It shouldn't get lost on my shelves. It should go to someone who would love it, long-term.

First come, first served. Second come gets the badge.

Tonight, we went to see Kira Kupfersberg and her friend Evangeline in a two-woman performance piece based on the Descent of Inanna.  It was down on St Marks Place, off 1st Avenue, in a little black box of a theatre downstairs from a tattoo parlor, with a bar backstage and maybe 40 seats--a Downtown Venue if I've ever seen one.

The performance itself was delightful--acted narrative interspersed with ballads about love and loss and death and dances on the same themes, performed by two young women who knew what they were doing and were having a good time.  Moments of inaction were attributed to a third actor's having been hired away on a paying gig two weeks ago.  But really, they did a remarkable job of covering for her absence.  We were probably the oldest members of the audience by at least 20 years, and all in all, it was an evening very well spent. 

And then, when I came home, Ari Berk had posted a link to Elizabeth-Jane Baldry's latest movie on FaceBook:


Elizabeth-Jane is a delightful woman, a composer and film-maker who is using her considerable talents to involve the whole town of Chagford in the making of increasingly professional and beautifully-produced movies based on Devon folk and fairy tale.  The latest is Sir Lanval, with a script by Elizabeth-Jane and the afore-mentioned Ari Berk, to be filmed on location in Chagford and (wait for it) Brittany, in the Foret de Broceliande (okay, Forest of Paimpoint--but I prefer Broceliande, even without the proper accents), under the auspices of the inimitable Claudine Glot, who wrote the introduction to the French edition of Ellen Kusher's Thomas the Rhymer, and is the director of the Arthurian Museum in the Castle of Comper.  All of which I find incredibly cool.

I love having talented friends who have the courage, the drive, and the organization to do what they love, even without the blessings of the Commercial Powers That Be.  These are amateurs in the original and non-pejoritive sense of the word, and I admire the hell out of them

Okay, it's probably tacky reviewing my own event, but I didn't organize it, and I didn't read anything, I didn't emcee it.  I didn't utter a public word.  I took a lot of pictures (which LJ isn't uploading from my computer, for some unknown and probably perfectly simple reason.  Consarn it).

So.

It was wonderful.  Everybody there was a good reader to begin with (a couple were even professionals--actors backed up Alaya Johnson, and read in the place of our own glvalentine , who (sadly) wasn't able to be there).  But having music behind them, responding to their emotions and intensifying it. . . .  They all shone like stars.  The music really brought out the comic creepiness of Jeff Ford's "War Between Heaven and Hell Wallpaper" and the tragedy of ktempest 's "Black Feather" (from IF1).  Alaya Johnson's "The Score" became even more of the political thriller/mocumentary it is on the page.  And vschanoes totally knocked "Rats" out of the park, gobsmacking the audience and astonishing those of us who had never seen her in her punk rock star mode.  She should do performance art.  Seriously.

Don't take my word for it.  A bunch of people videoed the whole thing, and it's already shown up on You Tube.  Furthermore, there's going to be a Part II, in Boston:

Friday, November 13 at 7:30 p.m.
The Lily Pad
Inman Square
1353 Cambridge St
Readers will be Theodora Goss, Shira Lipkin, Catherynne M. Valente, Matthew Cheney, and F. Brett Cox
The musicians are Michael McLaughlin, Joe Kessler, and Joe Dejarnette
And (of course) Brian Francis Slattery, who is making the whole thing tick over.

I sure wish I could be there.  Somebody video it, okay?

Edited:
to get right valentine.  Sheesh.  I shouldn't be let out without an editor.  Luckily, I have you guys.

Whatever good fairy prompted Ellen to get tickets to Finian's Rainbow the day after we got home from World Fantasy, I'd like to shake his hand.  At 6:30 this evening, I was more inclined to curse than to praise him, but I would have been wrong, wrong, wrong.

For historical context, Finian's Rainbow was written in 1947, with lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Burton Lane, and a book by Yip Harburg and Fred Saidy.  In case these names mean as little to you as they did to me when I first heard them, Harburg wrote the lyrics to "It's Only a Paper Moon" and "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?".  The credits of the others are slightly more obscure, although Burton Lane wrote scores for 45 Hollywood films, so I've probably heard his music even thought I wasn't aware of it.  Harburg was the son of immigrants, which makes all kinds of sense, given the play's attitude towards all things American and the simultaneous sentimentality and acid of the lyrics and words.  It's a leftie, liberal, immigrant's view of a country that fascinates him as it disgusts and frustrates him, in which he finally finds hope, community, and a future.

It's also got one of the goofiest plots I've ever seen, a dancing mute girl who reminded me irresistibly of Elfine in Cold Comfort Farm, a stage Irishman who drinks and dreams, a leprechaun who is turning human by inches, a fiery Irish lass who captures the heart of an utterly square-jawed Amerricun Hero, a fat, bigoted Southern politician and his Laurel-and-Hardy fat sherriff and thin tax collector sidekicks.  Oh, and an entire stageful of friendly, dancing sharecroppers of all colors and a gospel trio looking for a second baritone.

And yes, it was funny and bitter and remarkably timely in its references to credit, race, the GOP, wishful thinking.  The singing was sweet and old-fashioned, not a Broadway Belter in the lot--not even Kate Baldwin as Sharon McLonergan, who has done her share of Broadway.  The dancing was accomplished and fun to watch, if not inspired.  My favorite characters were Christopher Fitzgerald as Og the Leprechaun, who managed to be twee and wry at the same time and bounced around the stage like a rubber ball, and the remarkable Jim Norton (who I saw in The Seafarer, than which there is possibly no play less like Finian's Rainbow in the world, except maybe Macbeth) as the eponymous Finian, singing (mostly on-key), dancing (with enthusiasm if not strict accuracy), and generally having one hell of a time.  And Terri White, who delivered her lines and the really great song "Necessity" with such character and conviction that she got an even bigger hand than Cheyenne Jackson, did a perfectly good job as the Hero, and I suppose it's not his fault he doesn't do a thing for me, but frankly, I thought Sharon would have done better with the sharecropper who was trying to save money for his third year in college, and who I can't recognize from his mug shot in the program, because he was wearing glasses on-stage and we were in the balcony.

Now I kind of want to see the 1968 movie, just as a period piece.  Anybody out there seen it?

Book Birthday for Interfictions 2 was November 3, and we celebrated with a lively reading at Borderlands Books in San Francisco.  Amelia Beamer, Ray Vukcevich, and Anna Tambour (from Interfictions 1) and one of the Beaming Editors (that would be me), read snippets of six stories, including two whose authors, from Argentina and France respectively, are unlikely to be able to read them to an USA audience any time soon.

TOMORROW (Friday) night we kick off the East Coast jam!  I hope you
can join Ellen and me there:

NEW YORK CITY
Friday, November 6 at 7:00 p.m.
Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
126 Crosby St
Readings by Interfictions & Interfictions 2 authors Jeffrey Ford, K.
Tempest Bradford, Carlos Hernandez, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Veronica
Schanoes, and Genevieve Valentine, backed up by local musicians Brian
Wecht, Jeremy Goddard, John Pinamonti, Nate Landau, Charlie Shaw,
conducted by Brian Francis Slattery, with MC Ellen Kushner (IAF Pres.)
& co-editor Delia Sherman. Expect sometimes raucous and sometimes
sweet, sometimes despairing and sometimes joyful, and always
interesting…art without borders.
http://www.housingworks.org/events/detail/interstitial-arts-foundation-launches-interfictions-2/

* * *
There are also cool events in Boston & LA.
For details, please see:
http://www.interstitialarts.org/wordpress/?p=125

* * *

The INTERFICTIONS AUCTION of Portable & Wearable Art inspired by
stories in Interfictions is now up at:
http://iafauctions.com/
There will be a new piece every day for a month - please bid early &
often for the perfect interstitial holiday gift!

So I'm reading along in Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens, which is a lot better than I remembered it being when I read it in college, if rather sentimental in patches, and I duly reach Chapter 10, which is entitled "Containing the Whole Science of Government." It concerns itself chiefly with the doings (or non-doings) of a (made-up) branch of British government called the Circumlocution Office. I refer the reader to the following paragraphs:

"It is true that How Not To Do iIt was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all round the Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How Not To Do It. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on the hustings because it hadn't been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachments to tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How It Was Not To Be Done. It is true that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, How Not To Do It. . . . All this is true, but the Circumlocution Office went beyond it.

Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping all this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How Not To Do It, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it, with a minute, and a memorandum, and a letter of instructions that extinguished him."

There is, of course (this is Dickens we're talking about, after all) lots more. But this is enough to go on with.

Things don't change much, do they, from century to century, or even from country to country? As I watch our poor administration labor mightily to get even the smallest and most necessary reforms past the House and Senate, I think of the Circumlocution Office and the fine, respected old governmental art of How Not To Do It. And I weep.

Just back from the banquet (a solid B+ on the Banquet Food Spectrum--but then, I had the beef, which is usually pretty good. The chicken looked pretty dire, and the one person at our table who had it, didn't finish it).

Anyway. The News you may or may not have been waiting for:

Best Novel:
Jeff Ford, The Shadow Year
Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels

Best Novella:
Richard Bowes, "When Angels Fight"

Best Short Story:
Kij Johnson, "26 Monkeys, also the Abyss"

Best Collection:
Jeffrey Ford, The Drowned Life

Best Anthology:
Ekatarina Sedia, Paper Cities

Best Artist:
Shaun Tan

Special Award, Professional:
Kelly Link & Gavin Grant

Special Award, Non-Professional:
Michael Walsh (for Howard Waldrop collections)

Life Achievement:
Jane Asher
Jane Yolen

Everyone seemed happy. Jay Lake's speech was lovely--all about story and how all stories began as fantasy. He made all the readers and booksellers stand up and be recognized, too, which I liked. The thank-you speeches were terse and heartfelt, the after-banquet milling the usual hug-fest. I don't think there will be too many rotten tomatoes thrown at the Post-Mortem, but I've always been an optimist. I better get downstairs and find out, I expect.

For me, WFC is like a huge family reunion. I've been going since 1975 (thank you, neogothic )--not every year, but most years. First, I went as a reader, taking notes in panels, buying stacks of books, going through the art show panel by panel--often accompanied by Fay Ringel, with whom I giggled over brass-bra-ed maidens and the lack of gravity in the paintings of Boris Vallejo. There are close friendships I've made here, art I've bought here, business I've conducted and ideas I've floated. This con has really seen the development of my professional career.

So it's impossible for me to be dispassionate and reporterly about it.

For one thing, I don't go to that many panels any more. They're wonderful (particularly this year, according to the buzz in the halls). But they're not what I'm here for so much. I'm here to catch up with old friends, to introduce new friends to old friends and to each other. Our Clarion 2007 students are here, looking happy to see each other and us, reporting stories written and sold, hatching plans for fundraising art auctions and projects. People are working on new novels, on story collections. They're thinking of changing agents, have just changed agents--or publishers, or domestic partners, or cities--or are perfectly happy with where they've been for the last 20 years. Some of them, I exchange life experiences with. Some, congratulations or condolences. Some, I pitch IAF to (Interficitons 2 is coming out Nov. 3, after all). (Note to self--must have some IAF business cards made up--right away). Some I advise; some I go to for advise.

I find, 3 days into the convention, that I genuinely love them all--even those I don't know. Even the ones I don't really have much in common with. They're all part of the great and glorious party that is World Fantasy Convention, and it wouldn't be the same without them all.

Edited to correct egregious errors, plus grammar.  Note to self:  Don't post when really, really tired, even when you really, really want to.

I've got a complete draft of my circus vampire story.  It's got saggy bits and baggy bits, and I need to sort out the heroine's relationship with her body and her parents, not necessarily in that order.  I'll poke at it again tomorrow, then let it marinate until I can get home, print it out, and subject it to a final polish.

I've also got an actual plot for my next New York Between book, thanks to intense discussions over lunch the past two days, and many notes towards a proposal.

A short story and a novel proposal aren't a bad 9 days' work, even if neither is exactly done and dusted.

I've done some reading, too.  Justine Larbalastier's astonishing Liar, Sheridan LeFanu's seminal sexy-vampire story Carmilla, and the end of Thorne Smith's Topper, which I began on the plane.  I started Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, but since it belongs to someone else and I know I won't  finish it before I leave (not if I want to get through another draft of "Flying" and turn my plot notes for The Dragon of Wall Street into actual prose), I have (reluctantly) laid it aside.  You can be sure I'll be buying it at World Fantasy, though.  

Under other circumstances, I'd be telling you all about the street markets and the colors of the buildings and the restaurant with the all-matador decor and the stuffed bull by the front door and the wonderful jeweler from whom I bought Ellen's anniversary present and the antique shop with the wall o' angels and the Day of the Dead skeleton figures and the firecrackers going off all day Sunday.  And if I'm up at 4 again tomorrow morning (Mexican time), I may very well do that.  But really, I'd rather sleep.

I am holed up (with Holly Black, Cassie Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Theo Black, and Josh Lewis) in an expansive (but reasonable) villa in the Mexican town of San Miguel de Allende. It is famous (at least in certain YA writer circles) as the perfect place for a writing retreat. The food is good, the climate is clement, the colors are wonderful, and there's not a whole lot to do other than write. And play on the internet, but the connection is far too slow to make that fun for long. Besides, I don't play on the internet. I research. Mostly.

Why are you laughing at me?

Anyway. I arrived at the nearest airport last night at 10:40 local time, an hour after I expected to be there, took ages to get through customs (you press a button at the customs kiosk, and if the light flashes red, your suitcase gets searched. Mine flashed green, thank goodness, but there were several reds ahead of me, one with many suitcases), and was generally crosseyed and stiff and slightly headachy. By the time the car got me to San Miguel, it was midnight or thereabouts, the headache was no longer slight, we'd driven over highways, byways, and sections of unpaved road, and I had no sense at all of what kind of a place I was in. Were those dark shapes over there mountains or clouds? Were we in the mountains or on a high plateau? Was that cactus? (It was.) Were those little roadside stands in the middle of nowhere selling food? (They were). Were we ever going to get there? (We did).

Fed, watered, pina-coladed, Adviled, and well-slept, and fed again, I realize that of course we're in the mountains (high enough for an altitude headache), but since San Miguel seems to be on a kind of wide plateau, I still have no real sense of mountainness. Our villa is surrounded by walls, with nothing much visible over them but the neighbors' trees. Even when we went out for lunch, all I was aware of was the town itself, narrow, cobbled streets that had been grey and deserted the night before, now bright with walls painted ochre and pink and cerulean and alive with shopkeepers and school children and vendors and tourists. No dogs, though. Last night, I saw two in the country and a couple more in town, big black and tan animals with pointed muzzles and long tails, heading down the road at the purposeful trot of a dog with business to attend to.

And now the burning question. Have I written? Well, mostly what I'm doing is reacquainting myself with a text I've poked at and thought about, but not recently, and looking up some stuff, and taking notes and revising the odd (and I do mean odd) paragraph, in preparation for making, er allowing Holly and Sarah to read it so they can help me figure out what it's really about so I can figure out what the climax should be instead of dancing around batting at it like a cat with a half-dead bee.

Tomorrow will be more productive.

How time flies when you're, well, doing a lot of stuff.  We saw A Boy and His Soul on Tuesday night, and I was going to blog it on Wednesday, but I had a date with nojojojo and Alaya Dawn Johnson to talk about Freedom Maze, my next novel (if I can ever get it right), and that date oozed into dinner and then it was Thursday and appointments associated with having all our windows replaced in November and emails that needed answering and so on, and gee, willikers, will you looky that.  Friday, and a wonderful one-man show unblogged.

Well, better late than never, I always say.

The short version?  If you were alive in the 70's or love/like/know anything about Motown or are gay or black or have a family or felt like a misfit or like watching a brilliant physical actor strut his stuff, you'll find something to like about this show.  I first saw Colman Domingo in Passing Strange (which, if you remember, we liked so much, we went twice), and found him utterly compelling to watch as he embodied a gay Baptist choirmaster, a Dutch stoner, a German performance artist, and a few other characters I can't immediately call to mind.  He was just as good, and more touching, as his smart-ass sister, his total-guy brother, his loving and anxious mother, and his salt-of the earth stepfather, plus a sprinkling of other relatives, teachers, and figures from his past. 

And then there was the music.  I didn't recognize the name of a single song he mentioned, let alone the artist and the label, but I knew all the tunes and many of the words, and found myself moved to tears several times by the conjunction of music, story, and Domingo's focused and electric presence.  Yes, there were quibbles about how he might have told the story better, or repeated himself less (as common a feature of one-person shows as freckles on genuine redheads), but hell, the guy really means every word he says, dances like a demon and sings like an angel.  Who can ask for anything more?

Here are my panels for WFC:

Friday    1:00 PM    Invention vs. Tradition

Readers like original stories that surprise them.  Readers like comfortable formulas that fulfill their expectations. What are the ways authors and editors deal with these two competing impulses?    John  Kessel, Richard  Lupoff, Beth  Meacham, Delia  Sherman, Daniel  Waters


Sunday    4:00 PM    Awards Postmortem

The judges of this year's World Fantasy Awards (Jenny Blackford, Peter Heck, Ellen Klages, Chris Roberson & Delia Sherman) will discuss the process of determining the nominees and the winners.

I am  looking forward to what everybody says about Invention vs. Tradition.  Maybe I'll moderate.

And I'm really looking forward to having a good old chin-wag with my fellow WFA judges.  We had a great time together in cyberspace, and I'm very excited about actually meeting Chris and seeing Jenny again (we met at Worldcon).

New on The Interfictions Annex, Mark Rich's "Stonefield" (www.interstitialarts.org/projects/rich_stonefield.php) about a man who haunts a small town, or perhaps a town that haunts a man.

". . . how strange, though, Michael thought, how he walked into the livery stables and saw himself so strongly sitting on a crate beside a short barrel, playing cards."

I've certainly felt that way in some of the historical places I've visited--perhaps most strongly at Gwydir Castle, and on a farm in Normandy, 15 years ago.  It couldn't be uncommon, or nobody would believe in past lives.  Take that feeling one step further, run it through the unique filter of a writer's consciousness, and you get. . . .  Well, a story Chris and I liked a lot.

And if you haven't read the earlier stories, you can do that, too.  They're all dandy.

I've found a Trapeze Glossary on line, and several Circus Glossaries, but while they list some very cool-sounding tricks and moves (Angel; Reverse Angel; Bird's Nest; Amazon--and a bunch more I wrote down on a piece of paper somewhere that I now can't find), they don't say what they look like.  And I'd like to know what they look like, otherwise, I'm liable to write something unforgivably foolish, and we can't have that, can we?  No, we can't.

Anybody out there in LJ-land know anything about trapezes?  The circus I'm positing is a boutique circus, one tiny ring, not enough room or height for flying, so it's got to be stuff you can do on a static trapeze, preferably a frame rig (see, I've picked up something in all this research, just not enough).  There has to be a book out there, but I'm coming up empty--except for a book in French, available only in the UK, with pictures, for far too much money.

Back to You-Tube.  It doesn't give me the names of things, but it sure does give me the visuals.  And I need something to kick this story into life.  It's currently lying there on my desk with little x's over its hypothetical eyes.